After all the excitement with the Summer Games we just had circulating through the city, it’s understandable if news about the upcoming Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, makes you feel a little fatigued.
After juxtaposing the two multi-sport events, and the cities in which they have taken and are taking place, I found cause to be all the more grateful to have been in Estevan for our Games.
Brazil—a country facing tremendous economic troubles and political uncertainty with its president currently being impeached—has had some difficulty preparing for the Olympics. It would seem the country bit off more than it could chew in preparation for the event, and ended up rushing everything from accommodations to sanitation.
There are issues that include an athlete’s village, which apparently took notes from Sochi in 2014, with ill-equipped rooms missing electrical components, and basic provisions missing, such as basic plumbing and beds. According to some Australian athletes who arrived early, some of the fire alarms didn’t work either.
The matter of the water was the one that raised my eyebrows the highest. That’s because the water, which contains dangerous levels of raw sewage and garbage, may or may not still have that stuff in it when people perform their sports there.
Athletes to participate in swimming events have been advised well in advance, to swim with their mouths closed, because if they ingest more than three teaspoons of the water, they are at risk to become violently ill. Sound advice, but I don’t know how much that would help, if I were one of the athletes fixing to swim 10 kilometres for my event.
That’s a doozy, but the city has kept busy trying to get the area ready by booming off the more dangerous and dirty sources of water from the local rivers. With the surfeit of sewage and garbage that is perpetually dumped into the water, I have my doubts about how clean that water is going to be when the swimming begins. The pollution in Rio’s waterways is almost as old as the city itself.
If anything, seeing the growing consternation about the games in Rio makes me grateful for the City of Estevan, and the multitude of clean, operable infrastructure available here. Sure, there were some hiccups, but even that flash flooding in early July couldn’t dampen the spirit of the city, nor throw it off its plans for the Games.
Another point goes to the Games in Estevan for its security protocols. One piece of plastic with my face on it, attached to a neon lanyard, was all I needed to get into any event, no questions asked.
Compare that to a journalist named Scott Stinson, who wrote an account of how he was accosted by gun-toting members of Brazil’s national police force, for just walking to the Rio Olympic Arena a little too early.
I’ll admit my judgment is a little harsh. To be entirely fair, Estevan and Rio are completely different cities in terms of their size, and the magnitude security threats they face while holding a multi-sport event.
After the series of terrorist attacks, many of which have been credited to ISIS in Europe, Rio isn’t taking any chances, even though Brazil hasn’t recently faced any sort of terroristic threat. The city has its security protocols amped up at airports and other important key points associated with the Olympics and the enormous crowds of people the events will attract. Members of the military are all over the place to make sure everything goes off without a hitch.
That’s a sound decision, given that Rio is a major city, and considering that the Olympics have a history of attracting terrorists, with atrocities like what happened in Atlanta, in 1996, and Munich, West Germany, in 1972, being biting examples of what awaits a host city that’s not on the lookout for security threats.
Meanwhile, the grand total of major problems the local police had to deal with, that was associated with the Games was a grand total of…drumroll, please… jack squat.
Sometimes, I take for granted how safe and sound a place to live Estevan, Saskatchewan, and Canada are. Although comparing the Summer Games here to the Summer Olympics in Rio is an apples-to-oranges comparison, there are parallels nonetheless that make me proud and satisfied to have been a here for our smaller, safer—and just as exciting—sporting event.
